One of the designers who made it happen

Great to work with. Has fresh new ideas to add to any project. He is speedy and very responsive. Will continue to work with Twister on all future projects.

- ChaMond Group

How Robert11946 started their button or icon journey

Who are you known as?

Angry Aztec Ltd

What industry do you think your business is most related to?

Computer

Tell us a bit about who you are and the people you reach

We sell productivity apps for iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad.

What inspires you and how do you envision the design for your business?

Now Then is a new app for iOS devices that tracks what users do with their time.

It is intended primarily for those who need to report on what they have been working on, especially freelancers and contractors, and for those who work from home and simply want to ensure they are making the most productive use of their time.

Now Then lets users record what tasks they are doing Now (in the present), and later lets them see (and analyse) what they were doing Then (in the past). It aims to let the user record what they are doing with the minimum of inconvenience, they can be in and out of the app again really quickly.

Users are able to create their own custom list of tasks of things they tend to do, then record what they are doing now by simply tapping to start or stop the task. These lists of tasks are hierarchical, letting the user break down tasks into sub tasks - making their task list as powerful and complex, or as flat and simple as they desire.

Because of the app's focus on both the present and the recent past, we would like an icon that reflects this temporal duality.

We find as the contest goes on that we are preferring entries that are grounding the more abstract aspects of what the app does with more concrete, real-world concepts. Those that are using calendars, planners, notepads, journals or even just a suggestion of those to ground the concept that the app is tracking what the user does but holds a record of it too. We are still receiving a number of strong abstract designs, but we find that we are drawn more towards these more concrete design concepts, which work really well when coupled with appropriate textures. We feel these designs may resonate better with our customers.

We will try to provide feedback at least daily in the early stages, more often as the contest comes near to a close.

Other requirements

The icon should not be over fussy - we would like a clean, clear and simple icon, though with textures or gradients where appropriate for the design. It should be very graphic and professional, rather than cartoon or aiming for photo-realism.

The icon should make good use of colour, and be vibrant - to stand out both in the App Store, and on the iPhone or iPad home screen. We are not going to suggest colours at this stage, but will give feedback based on the entries received. However, the colours chosen should go well together - without being garish.

Either a large bitmap master (PNG 1,024px or greater), an original photoshop master, or a vector format master (EPS/AI) would also be appreciated if available (though not essential). This is in case we need to generate additional sizes in the future.

The icon should contain no text elements at all, as we would like to be able to use the one icon design for a worldwide audience.

The icon should be an original work of art.

See the attached example screenshots from a very early version of the app.

Examples of apps that we think have strong icons and like:
Evernote, Ommifocus, SoundHound, Apple's Messages, Dropbox, Clear, Things, Readability, Spotify, Infinity Blade
(Note: these suggestions aren't intended as designs we want to see imitated, but give an idea of the sort of simple, clean, crisp look we like)